Work is Never Done
by Fan Of Games
Summary: Following a long week of work, all Reficul wants is a good night's sleep followed by a weekend of free reading while listening to good music. Unfortunately, there is still work to do. Will Reficul ever get time off from her duties for some much needed rest, or will a very heavy workload take up what little time she has for herself?


It was a normally quiet day at the office, not all that unusual for someone who happened to be from around the area. It was pretty late at night, and all of the employees went home after quite a tedious week of work. There weren't a lot of breaks this week, so everyone looked forward to the weekend when they could finally have time off to get the leisure they deserved. They could do whatever they wanted on the weekend, and hardly anybody stopped them from enjoying their time off. Anybody except for Reficul, a top executive at the company. She kept them in line, but was otherwise very lenient as she allowed them to do anything. It was usually like that, though the devil was starting to become a little more easygoing in that regard, likely because of her recent trip to the Grey Garden where she participated in the defense against Ivlis to some extent. Perhaps the peaceful lifestyle in the Grey Garden was starting to rub off on her.

In any case, the aloof devil was still finishing up some paperwork before she could head home herself. Sin and Lzet were away in another world on business and wouldn't be back for about a couple more weeks, while Mors was also away in a different world for the same reason, so she had home all to herself for a while. It would be spent reading and listening to some good music, peaceful tracks completely unlike the various metal and rock &amp; roll tunes the other inhabitants of her world liked. One could say the Grey Garden influenced that, but her choice went deeper than that since it brought back memories of her time as an angel. She was fond of her past life, but would still make the choices she made to get here without regrets.

Putting her signature on one last document, Reficul placed it upon a stack of other papers and brought them over to a nearby room where several copy machines were set up. She could have done it herself, but there were workers in charge of that assignment already and she really wanted to get home and rest. She yawned and stretched as she headed back to her office to get her stuff. It was raining pretty hard outside, so she brought a coat and an umbrella in addition to the briefcase she always carried with her. It contained some important files and the laptop she used to get much of her work done. It was one of her greatest tools in the office; if it broke, she would need to order a new one that usually came a month following the order's placement and set it up to keep working.

After acquiring her things, Reficul sauntered casually over to the elevator and pressed the button to bring it up. She waited for a couple of minutes until it arrived at her floor and stepped in, pressing the button for the first floor where she silently strode across the lobby towards the front door. Nobody else was around as she left since she was the last to leave, so it was a relatively quiet walk aside from the torrential downpour blanketing the city as she made her way through an alley across the street to a nearby train station to board a train for home.

The ride was simplistic during the hour long ride, a very boring way back home. All Reficul could do was look out the window at the scenery that went by, sighing out of sheer boredom while she waited for the train to make its stop at a rural area near her home. It was going to be a somewhat long walk there and up to the front porch where the rain wouldn't fall upon her, but Reficul didn't mind so long as she made it. From then on, the weekend would be quiet so she could rest from a hectic workload that took up the entire week. A good night's sleep was all she wanted at the end of today so she could be fresh for a full two days of reading and music.

It wasn't the most exciting way to spend a weekend, but it was comforting.

The train pulled up to the station, and Reficul disembarked to head home after making sure she had everything before stepping off the train.

That was when her cellphone rang.

She pulled it out of her pocket and answered the call, recognizing the voice of one of her employees. "Hello, Ms. Reficul, are you there?"

"Ah, yes, Uhluhtc," Reficul responded as she set her things down by a bench and sat down to focus on the call. A small bit of rest from the train ride was good, and she much rather preferred taking the call here under a roof instead of in the pouring rain. "I have just gotten off the train now. Is there something you wish to inquire?"

"Wait, you went home already?" Uhluhtc asked from the other end as if something crucial had come up on his own with an expectation that Reficul could offer assistance.

"Indeed, why? Has anything come up with work? I'd have thought you finished everything for the week, am I correct? Or is there another matter which you'd like to discuss?"

"I beg your pardon, Ms. Reficul, and forgive me for possibly coming across as a tad blunt, but I could ask you the same thing."

Reficul was somewhat confused, unsure she understood where Uhluhtc was going with this line of inquiry. "Come again?"

"The third question you asked me. The one about finishing work."

Now Reficul was completely confused. Why was her employee asking if she finished her work or not? She was certain that the final stack she signed off on was the last bit of paperwork she needed to do. Perhaps it wasn't the best idea, but she'd bite.

"What about finishing work?"

"Those documents regarding the big project next week. Have you gone through them yet?" Uhluhtc said to check if they were finished and prepared for some sort of an upcoming event.

"Documents?" Reficul asked. She didn't miss those papers, did she? They were part of the last stack, right? She swore they were, but began to doubt her own integrity. "I don't recall seeing them when I was finishing up tonight," she stated, hoping her employee would jog her memory.

"Well, they were there," Uhluhtc asserted. "I left them on the coffee table in your office since your desk was packed with other sheets on different projects."

Reficul face palmed and sighed. Oh, those documents. Yeah, she definitely missed those. "Ah, I see. My apologies for forgetting those. I shall read through them carefully on Monday and get back to you on them before signing the documents."

"With all due respect, Ms. Reficul, those actually have to be finished by Monday."

She didn't like the sound of that. "By Monday?" she asked, her voice nearly faltering.

"Yep," Uhluhtc confirmed. "By seven thirty to be specific."

"That early?" Reficul inquired, trying to keep her voice steady. She'd been looking forward to getting time off this weekend, especially since it was going to be pouring hard during the next two days. Nobody was going back to work then until Monday, so she found it hard to believe she might have to take the train all the way back either now or sometime on the weekend.

"Yes, it's in the schedule for Monday, the meeting between my department and another. You said you'd be sitting in on that as well."

If Reficul was still confused already, she was now baffled. "I don't remember having that in Monday's schedule. Who authorized that?"

"You did," came Uhluhtc's reply over the phone. "Check your calendar. It should have the information on it concerning Monday morning's meeting. You had also sent out emails for it. I'll forward a copy you sent to me to remind you of it. I guess the heavy workload exhausted you."

Oh, that meeting. Right…Yes, now she could recall it. She gave the go ahead on Tuesday. How could she have forgotten it? Perhaps it was because she was swamped with so much work. "Yes, it most certainly did. Thanks for the reminder," she said as she picked up her briefcase and crossed over to the other side of the station. "I'll head back to the office now and get that done in time for Monday's meeting," she said, unaware she was forgetting something else. "See you then."

"Alright, goodbye. Have a nice weekend, Ms. Reficul."

"Yes, you too. Goodbye." And with that, she closed her cell phone and waited for a while until the next train pulled in before boarding.

It was another hour of silence, especially as she was the only passenger on board this time.

When the train finally arrived at the station by the company, Reficul reached down to pick up her briefcase from the floor by her seat and also went to pick up her umbrella, but…

"Ah, shit…" she muttered under her breath, realizing that she forgot it at the other station. She really needed to pay better attention to these things so they didn't go right over her head. Then again, it was kind of understandable since it had been a hectic week and she barely got much sleep. She only had her coat for protection, so she simply put her hood up and held the briefcase close to her chest so it wouldn't get too wet as she disembarked and hurried towards the company.

"First the project and now my umbrella…" she muttered again in irritation, "this day can't possibly get any worse than this."

She didn't expect things to go downhill again, but fate did have an uncanny way of getting things to play out just the way it wanted them to. Reficul was aware of that, but she didn't make a connection between her forgetfulness and the mysterious ways in which fate moved.

Which was why she was nearly trampled by a horse drawn carriage rushing to escape the rain as she crossed the street to the company building. Reficul didn't expect it since the carriage came out of nowhere in her perspective, but in truth she really wasn't paying much attention. Her mind was only focused on one thing, and that was the paperwork she needed to finish.

In her haste to get inside and out of the rain while narrowly avoiding the carriage, Reficul's eyes jolted wide open when she cried out as she tripped over the sidewalk. Although she attempted to regain her balance by catching herself while stumbling, Reficul shrieked as she slipped and fell backwards. The latch keeping her briefcase had come undone during her stumble, and it flew out of her hands when the devil fell. All of the papers within it flew out and were seized by gusts of powerful winds that blew each of them around her before they dropped to the wet ground. Reficul's laptop had also fallen victim to the same result, though the hammer of fate came down hard on it as the laptop fell into a puddle near where she fell.

Her eyes widened in shock as she quickly whipped around while still falling, causing her ankle to become twisted and sprained. It hurt badly, but her attention was now on the laptop which fizzled in the puddle. It short-circuited for several moments until the poor laptop died out once the final sparks died as Reficul's body hit the street.

"Oh no…" she whispered, desperately wishing the laptop was still intact and also in good condition. "No, no, no, no, no…" she repeated over and over as she rushed to it and carefully, but also rather hastily, picked her laptop up and checked to see if it was working by pressing the power button on it. Unfortunately, it appeared she would have to wait a whole month to get another one.

Her head hanging in exasperated shame, she suddenly found herself getting angry over this unfortunate accident as she shoved the busted laptop in her briefcase and gathered the papers, all the while cursing under her breath for suffering from this detrimental setback. "Shit, shit, shit…"

Reficul stormed to the front entrance—more like staggered to it on her sprained ankle while uttering small gasps of pain- setting her briefcase down on the sidewalk so she could take out her wallet. She fumbled with it briefly as she pulled out her ID card and inserted it in a device attached to the door before putting the card back into the wallet. Reficul then grabbed the briefcase and entered the building after the system let her in, crossing the lobby once again to the elevator.

She pressed the button and got in, her heart pounding from stress as the elevator went all the way up the floor her office was on. As soon as it reached its destination, Reficul got out and stopped briefly at a box of first aid stuff to get some bandages out for her ankle. She wrapped them around the minor injury before staggering down the hall to her office, slamming the briefcase down on one of the side tables inside. Reficul then went over to the coffee table where there was not one, but multiple stacks of documents for her to go through, all of which she saw after turning on the light in her office. However, it wasn't until this moment she gave them any notice.

Her mouth hung agape in shock. _"Just how big is this project?!"_ she thought to herself in disbelief at the amount of paperwork she would have to go through in order to finish it all entirely. Yet she sighed while taking a stack to her desk. Reficul knew she was never like this, aware that she was acting out of character by expressing incredulity at so much paperwork.

But to be fair, it really did look like a massive assignment, one she would need help for. It was unfortunate that nobody else was in the office to help her, otherwise the job would be quicker.

So with a heavy sigh of exhaustion as she began to start the beginning of what would likely consume the entire night, eating away at that precious time she would've much rather spent on the weekend, Reficul set the stack down and went through them all one by one, stack by stack. Her eyelids grew heavier with each document, each stack completed, and she felt she couldn't keep them open for much longer as the hours passed. Several times she yawned and stretched her arms up in the air, but she was rooted to her chair for the whole night with nary a sound aside from the rain pattering against the window and vibrations from her phone which she put on vibrate so the calls wouldn't disturb her further. Reficul was already very tired from all the work throughout the week and tonight, so a sudden call would be like an alarm clock to her—a loud alarm clock capable of frightening Reficul when she was this tired, and even that was out of character too.

That was it. Nothing more happened that night. Just Reficul doing paperwork. It was a very tedious task, especially with this many documents, but someone had to do it. Unfortunately, that someone had to be Reficul, and only Reficul alone.

By the time she finished it all, it was already morning even though the sky had not cleared. With the last document of the very last stack now placed where it should be, Reficul finally stood up and stretched completely. Her bones and joints were aching from so many hours of sleepless work without anything else productive going on aside from the paperwork. After the many trips and return trips she had to make back and forth between her office and the room where the meeting would be held, she finally put on her coat and took the briefcase with the destroyed laptop and ruined papers in it before heading out to the elevator so she could finally leave work at long last.

A good chunk of her weekend would be spent getting home and sleeping, leaving less time for her to read while listening to music. It didn't bother her too much, though. The paperwork was all done and Reficul could finally go home and get some much needed rest.

On the way down, she took out her phone to check how many messages she received last night while working. Reficul yawned, the bags under her eyes becoming quite apparent as she took a look through her messages. She expected them to simply be ordinary, perhaps a bit of spam.

Reficul's pupils dilated as her eyes widened in shock and her mouth hung agape again. The very same facial expression from last night when she first saw the stacks of documents.

There were hundreds of messages and missed calls. _Hundreds._

And in the subject given for what kind of messages they were…

Things related to work. Various requests, copies of more documents, questions concerning what to do for projects, etc. Everything…_Everything that had to do with work_.

"T-this must be a bad dream…" she whispered in disbelief, her whole body beginning to tense with anger as she trembled with rage. Reficul was so furious she almost crushed her phone. _Almost._ Just great, more assignments for her to take care of. More work for her to do. "N-no…"

Her whole body trembled violently in anger before Reficul screamed in rage.

…

**I was originally going to add more to this, but I decided not to because Reficul already suffered enough as it is in this one-shot. **

**Anyway, what motivated me into writing this was an idea that Reficul has a sense of professionalism in her character, an aspect I interpreted from her appearance and how she conducted herself in the Grey Garden—aside from her meeting with Ivlis. There are comics for this game online if I'm correct, but I haven't seen them just as I haven't played the game; though I finally did manage to finish watching a playthrough of it. So I wrote this to try and explore this professional aspect based on my interpretation. I know it is probably different from what the comics might cover, but I tried to keep it as close to what could be more in canon while referencing a few of the characters she knows. Like I said, I've not played the Grey Garden as I had also mentioned in my previous fanfic of the game, **_Sick Day on the Night Shift_**, nor read the comics, so much of my knowledge of the Grey Garden comes from the full playthrough I watched on YouTube and the wikia.**

**Also, Uhluhtc is backwards for Cthulhu from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos in case anyone wondered where I got his name from.**

** Emperor853: Thanks for reviewing **_Sick Day on the Night Shift_**. I appreciate it. Sorry for responding to your review in a different fanfic, but I couldn't respond to you in another chapter of that story because it was a one-shot like this story is. I marked it as a completed work when I was publishing it on the site, but that didn't go through the first time for some reason—the same happened to the characters I marked as well. I also don't have PMs turned on, so I can't respond to others through that either unless I activate it; it's a personal choice of mine whether I want to use it or not, really, so I just reply through reviews or on forums. **

**As for your comment on Grora's abuse of Ater threatening to sever relations between angels and demons, I can understand why you might think it is wrong, though I wrote that bit based on common sense concerning truces like the one the angels and demons made in the game. When you have two different groups join together and then an individual from either one is acting mean to someone from the other group, there is bound to be friction whether that person gets banned from the entire party or causes the two groups to split back up and oppose each other. They could have been enemies to begin with until they united as one group, so the actions of one can threaten to shatter that unity by splitting it up.**

**In any case, thanks again for reviewing **_Sick Day on the Night Shift_**, and I hope you and others enjoy reading this story as I enjoyed typing it.**

**If you're wondering what my next fanfic will be, I actually have a pretty good idea of what to do. With Five Nights at Freddy's 3 coming out soon, I decided to write a crossover between the series and the Grey Garden. I've never played the first two games in the trilogy, but I've watched full playthroughs of those games as well and have taken an interest in them. So what better way to begin a fanfic than to commemorate one of the best horror franchises out there now that the third game is confirmed?**

**Disclaimer:**

**I don't own the Grey Garden; it's owned by Mogeko.**

**I don't own Cthulhu; he is owned by H.P. Lovecraft.**


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